For several years the trend in domestic refrigerator cabinets has been to increase the size and in particular the width of the food compartments which brought about the use of double doors. The advantage of the larger refrigerator however, is lessened by fitting side-by-side a freezer on one side and a refrigerator on the other side of a refrigerator cabinet with a center vertical mullion against which the side-by-side doors close. Omission of the vertical mullion to maintain the freezer compartment on the top, the fresh food compartment below and yet still have side-by-side doors, introduces the problem of effectively sealing the doors along their juxtapositioned facing sides. To provide a thermal and/or air seal between the facing surfaces of the doors when the doors are closed, compressible gaskets have been developed that extend along the side face of each door and contact each other during door closure. Each gasket includes magnets extending vertically along the length of the gasket. The magnets in opposing gaskets are oppositely poled so that the magnetic poles attract when the doors are aligned in a side-by-side closed position. During door opening when one door is moved relative to the other door, like poles of the magnets pass by each other causing the magnets to repel and move the gaskets apart reducing wiping contact of the gaskets. However, once these "repelling" magnets pass by each other, gasket wiping occurs along the entire vertical length of the gasket.
Many different magnetic gasket sealing assemblies for side-by-side or "French" doors used to close an open front of a refrigerator cabinet are disclosed in the U.S. Patent literature. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,248,159 issued Apr. 26, 1996 to Charles Hall teaches the use of three sets of magnets in two gaskets. A first pair of magnets are arranged to attract and seal the two gaskets when the doors are in the closed position. This first pair of magnets are hingedly attached in a flexible gasket to a second pair of magnets, one in each gasket which pivot the gasket sealing faces to move the first pair of magnets out of contacting position relative to each other during opening and closing of the French doors to reduce wiping. The magnetic gasket seals are arranged forward of a recessed shoulder in each of the French doors.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,264,048 issued Aug. 2, 1966 to A. J. Koch et al describes a magnetic gasket seal for French doors where the gaskets overlap each other in the direction of opening which causes a wiping action which reduces the life of the gasket. Other examples of French door magnetic gasket seals are described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,723,896 issued to Wurtz on Nov. 15, 1955; U.S. Pat. No. 3,408,772 issued to Frehse on Nov. 5, 1968; U.S. Pat. No. 4,226,489 issued Oct. 7, 1980 to Charles Haag; U.S. Pat. No. 4,288,135 issued Sep. 8, 1981 to Buchser et al; U.S. Pat. No. 5,289,657 issued Mar. 1, 1994 to Lowell Kiel and U.S. Pat. No. 5,309,680 issued May 10, 1994 to Lowell Kiel. All of these French door closure gasket seals are subject to wiping along the entire vertical length of the adjacent facing gaskets during closure thereby effecting the proper closure of the doors and gasket sealing integrity over the life span of the gasket.
The aforementioned patents are concerned with sealing of French doors by using sealing gaskets with magnets that cause one or more of the door gaskets to move relative to the other gasket during opening/closing operation to reduce the effects of wiping. These patents do not address the problem associated with continued simultaneous swiping of gaskets along the entire vertical length of the gasket the doors are moved into a closed position. This wiping action reduces the longevity of the door seal integrity between adjacent doors and provides the user with an un-sure feeling that the door may not be properly closed. In some instances, the force used to close the door may be insufficient to overcome the wiping along the length of the gaskets leaving the doors partially ajar.
French door gaskets must seal along their entire vertical length, which for the most part extends between the upper and lower peripheral walls of the refrigerator cabinet to provide an effective seal which also creates the problematic wiping along the vertical length of the gaskets. Further, as the width of the refrigerator cabinet increases and the size the weight of the double doors increases. This increases the stress placed on door sealing gaskets. As a result the effects of prolonged wiping along the vertical lengths of these gaskets affixed to the opposing juxtapositioned sides of the refrigerator may cause premature gasket deterioration and misalignment shortening the life of the seal. While the use of a vertical mullion overcomes this problem because the entire length of the sealing gasket can close against the vertical mullion to distribute evenly the door closing forces along the length of the gasket and mullion, the use of the mullion defeats the purpose of providing a refrigerator cabinet having a single access to either or both of the fresh food compartment and the freezer food compartment when these compartments are positioned vertically above one another. Clearly, the patent literature for at least the last 40 years has recognized the difficulty in manufacturing an effective French door gasket seal between vertically extending and confronting side walls of the side by side doors.
In order to overcome the aforementioned problems with respect to the eliminating of the swiping contact along the vertical length of the confronting seals during door closure, reference may be had to my corresponding Canadian Patent Application Serial Number 2,231,319 filed Mar. 5, 1998 entitled Refrigerator Door Seal Assembly. This co-pending patent application sets out a novel door seal closure arrangement for French doors.
While most of the previous patents referred to hereinabove are directed towards French door seals, it should be understood that these seals extend along the surface of the vertical extending confronting sidewalls of the doors. In many instances, the seals extend rearwardly of the sidewalls of the door and are able to engage the horizontal front facing walls that define the top and bottom walls of the refrigerator food storage compartment. However, none of these patents describes a separate corner seal gasketing mechanism for effecting a proper seal along the vertical confronting sidewalls of the French Doors and against the horizontal open or front facing walls of the refrigerator cabinets.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,288,135 issued Sep. 8, 1981 issued to Buchser et al discloses an end cap ceiling element for closing off air gaps provided by two adjacently spaced apart seals of the confronting walls of the French Doors. This patent teaches an air space between the two seals and the top and bottom of the doors having end caps that seal the ends of the air space. However, this patent is not concerned with the reduction of any swiping contact at the corners of the French Gasket Doors while still maintaining a good seal against the front facing horizontal walls of the refrigerator compartment adjacent the corners of the confronting walls of the French doors.
Accordingly, there is a need for being able to provide an effective seal at the upper and lower corners of French doors used in a refrigerator to permit for the doors to be opened and closed relative to each other with minimal wiping while at the same time providing a good seal between the ends of the confronting sidewalls and against the front facing horizontal walls of the refrigerator cabinet.